Sans que rien manque au monde immense et radieux.

But our Haji is not Nihilistic in the "no-nothing" sense of
Hood's poem, or, as the American phrases it, "There is nothing
new, nothing true, and it don't signify." His is a healthy wail
over the shortness, and the miseries of life, because he finds
all created things--

Measure the world, with "Me" immense.

He reminds us of St. Augustine (Med. c. 21). "Vita haec, vita
misera, vita caduca, vita incerta, vita laboriosa, vita immunda,
vita domina malorum, regina superborum, plena miseriis et
erroribus . . . Quam humores tumidant, escae inflant, jejunia
macerant, joci dissolvunt, tristitiae consumunt; sollicitudo
coarctat, securitas hebetat, divitiae inflant et jactant.
Paupertas dejicit, juventus extollit, senectus incurvat,
importunitas frangit, maeror deprimit. Et his malis omnibus mors
furibunda succedit." But for _furibunda_ the Pilgrim would
perhaps read _benedicta_.

With Cardinal Newman, one of the glories of our age, Haji Abdu
finds "the Light of the world nothing else than the Prophet's
scroll, full of lamentations and mourning and woe." I cannot
refrain from quoting all this fine passage, if it be only for the
sake of its lame and shallow deduction. "To consider the world in
its length and breadth, its various history and the many races of
men, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their
conflicts, and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of
worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random